The Game Played Like A Champ
by fall-into-life
Summary: A one-shot AU featuring Santana as the destroyer of pretentious scene kids.


**Notes: I highly recommend you read this at my tumblr (fallintolife(dot)tumblr(dot)com/post/22768902074/fandom-glee-pairing-characters-santana-finn) because I can't do the hyperlinks to the songs and wikipedia articles (for those of you who don't know the bands and songs mentioned herein) on ffnet without breaking the flow of the story.**

**Also, the name is actually "The Game Played Like A Fucking Champ", but ffnet didn't like it so I censored it.**

Emarosa is her favorite band to use to make little indie boys cry.

Most of them can talk up and down about how Jonny Craig has a really fucking complicated relationship with Dance Gavin Dance, and some of them even know about his drug issues and 2012 court date and all that. No one can deny Craig can wail, and every little indie kid thinks they can do Emarosa's .Regret better than the man himself, but they don't know who they're fucking with when it comes to Santana.

She makes a point of inviting at least one of them to shows her band is playing. She never mentions that they're always headlining, never mentions how big the venue is, or that it'll probably be sold out. She just tells them her band name (Vicious, Vicious Words, after about a year of the name changing every ten minutes) and gives them a smile that almost promises it'll be worth their while.

Their mental breakdowns start at the door.

Santana always gives the doorman the little indie boy's name, and says to let in him and his "plus one", knowing that he'll have brought an entire crowd of people and that they'll only get in if he arrives ten minutes early like she asked him to (they never do, and she counts it as a personal victory in teaching hipsters real-people manners).

They always come see her while everyone's still setting up, Hudson lugging his ridiculous amount of cymbals and Puck fiddling endlessly with the settings on his eight pedals. They see Sam helping set up his bass amp, Matt lifting anything that needs lifting (but taking care of his guitar first, like a musician should), and Mike heading toward the sound guy to cut off his meddling before he can fuck up their sound, and assume that she over-exaggerated her role in the band.

She can see in their eyes that they figure she lied about being a part of the band, and she's actually the merch girl, or somebody's girlfriend. Sometimes she amuses herself during their endless babble (usually about how they know one of the other bands VVW is playing with; half the time it's bullshit and all of the time they make some snippy remark about how the sound is derivative or how so-and-so's band pioneered the sound they have) by imagining who they really think is the singer.

Santana is pretty sure that Matt projects "I don't talk", Mike is too obviously the sound technician to be the singer, and Hudson hovers over his drums too hard to be the singer unless they're an Atreyu knockoff. She's pretty sure they usually settle on either Puck or Sam, depending on if they've typed their band as another posthardcore clone or a bunch of electronicore pretty boys whose keyboardist/programmer is late.

Whatever they think, she waves them off with a wink and a smile right before soundcheck (she is a fucking phenomenal actress; they never suspect a thing), and gets onstage.

Depending on the size of the venue, she can either personally witness their confusion as she does a mic check with Mike, or just imagine them trying to make everything fit into their preconceived notion. Their confusion is delicious, and even though they try to hide it, it's obvious to her that they're trying to piece together the clues she's given.

Then she announces, "we're Vicious, Vicious Words, and we're going to open with a cover," with a smile that actually reaches her eyes, because hatred of pretentious hipsters aside, she fucking loves performing. Then she gets the nod from her boys, and says, "this is The Game Played Right, by Emarosa."

She either watches or imagines their confusion vanish in favor of the much more comfortable derision as the band starts up behind her and Santana makes last minute adjustments to her mic stand.

They watch as she meanders through the song, half raw sex appeal and half despair with a splash of contempt. Her fingers play up and the mic stand, her palms sliding over her mic like a lover as she alternates between pulling the stand close to her body and pushing it away. She switches between seducing the woman in the song and calling out to someone, anyone to rescue her from a string of emotionless one-night stands, pouring her heart into the song.

She doesn't try to match Craig's tone or exact style because she's Santana fucking Lopez, not anyone's knockoff, but she fucking kills it anyway, harmonizing effortlessly with Puck and Mike on the chorus. When they first proposed the song, it hit a little close to home, but now she's worn into it, and it fits as well as any song about something so depressing ever could.

Most of the indie boys leave about halfway through the song, when they realize that no, this is not a joke, and yes, she _is_ better than they'll ever be. She rates them by how far into VVW's set they can get before they leave in shame, and smirks when they don't stick around for the phone number she half-promised they would get after the show.

Only two have ever made it through their entire set: Mike, who immediately started telling her how the sound guy fucked them sideways by trying to blend Matt into Sam and minimizing Hudson's ghost notes, and was added to the band roster after about an hour of Matt feeling him out at the afterparty; and Brittany, who was actually someone's "plus one", and is the entire reason The Game Played Right hurt so much when they proposed using it to replace the Adele cover they used to do.

Other than the occasional stalker, and Puck breaking hearts like he's getting paid to do it, the scene is actually pretty good to her. She gets to fuck with hipsters who think they're better than her, and VVW is almost big enough that she can quit her day job (she works the register at a dollar store, and fuck you if you don't like it).

Life is good, she thinks as she catches sight of a head of blonde hair attached to a pair of legs that go on forever.


End file.
